


pockets full of stones (lay me down)

by Trojie



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Horror, Developing Relationship, Everyone Is Poly Because Pack, Friends With Benefits, Literal Sleeping Together, Multi, Pack Building, Post-Season/Series 04, Sleepy Sex, Stiles Has Nightmares, mildly dubious consent because of sleepy sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-02
Updated: 2015-07-02
Packaged: 2018-04-07 07:15:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4254255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>It's a toss-up as to whether Stiles would prefer the screaming night-terrors about all his friends dying, or the statistically-significant likelihood of supernatural disembowelment that comes with wandering comatose around this freaking town after dark.</i> </p><p>Stiles can't sleep. Scott's pack is falling apart around his ears, and yet apparently the biggest problem in their little world is that Stiles can't sleep. Stiles does not feel good about this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pockets full of stones (lay me down)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from ['What the Water Gave Me' by Florence + The Machine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am6rArVPip8). Beta-read by cosmonaught, who makes the best suggestions and squees the best squee, and anatsuno, the Queen of Commas and saviour of my written English. Thank you, lovelies <3

Stiles knows he's dreaming. It doesn't help. 

'Did you really think there wouldn't be a price?' says Allison. There's blood on her hands and Stiles is knee-deep in a lake of sick brown-red as she walks towards him. Sloshes. Wades. He backs up. 'For your life? It was a fairytale, Stiles,' she says. 'How do you pay the toll in a fairytale? Gold? Magic beans? Firstborn children -' She's stretching her stained fingers out towards him, and her eyes are burning coals and the wound in her belly seems like it's never gonna run dry. 'But no. You paid with _silver,_ Stiles.'

'I'm sorry,' he whispers, mouth dry. Like a Sphinx she nods, as if she accepts his apology, and then she grabs him by the throat and shoves him under. Blood tastes like metal in the back of his throat and he thrashes, trying to fight his way to the surface although he doesn't know which way is up any more, he's gonna run out of air, this is it, he's gonna die this time, he's falling, he's gonna _die_ \- 

\- and he slams awake, teetering, the edge of the bed under his hip, and the fall is real (the rest of it isn't, please, God, let the rest of it not be real, but Stiles is still having kind of a difficult time telling what is and isn't at the moment) and he's gonna land hard. Except then an arm snaps around him and yanks him back into warm, kinda sweaty, firm, _familiar_ flesh with unnatural strength. 

Stiles wriggles over onto his stomach within the tight cinch of that arm, needing to look but already knowing who he's gonna see. The edge-of-dawn pink glow coming through the curtains makes Scott look darker, softer, warmer than normal against Stiles's kinda-white sheets. He's clearly still half-asleep.

'Hey,' he says, as if this is normal. Stiles blinks at him. 'You left your window open,' Scott adds, like that's an explanation of why he's in Stiles's bed. On the other hand, worse things, and people, could be in Stiles's bed right now. 

Stiles keeps looking at him. 

'I couldn't sleep,' Scott confesses. 'So I took a walk. And then I just wanted to check you were okay, and you weren't. And you really did leave your window open.'

All werewolves are stalkers. It is a universal trait of the whole goddamn species. Stiles should write a bestiary of his own one day; all the shit he's been learning. But Scott doesn't tell lies, not to Stiles, so he probably didn't jimmy the window open. Stiles sighs, and looks over at his bedside table. The clock says 5.07am. 

Stiles flumpfs his face into his pillow and lets Scott's arm stay where it is. 

***

The next morning (or the same morning, but actually during daylight hours) Stiles realises it was the full moon last night. He realises this because when Malia flops into her seat next to him in English class, there are manacle bruises around her wrists. Being able to identify different kinds of bruises is just one of those fun skills Stiles has now.

He bites his tongue and resists the urge to pick up her hand and inspect the damage. 'Tough night?' he asks casually.

She leans over and peers into his eyes kinda worriedly. 'Not too tough,' she shrugs. 'Lydia and Kira have been helping me. _You_ don't look so hot though.'

'Thanks,' says Stiles drily. He sighs and scrubs his hands over his face. 'I just need more sleep, that's all.'

He puts his head down on his folded arms like a pillow and peeks over them. One row in front of him, Scott and Kira are smiling shyly at each other. Something settles down calmer in the pit of Stiles's stomach when he sees that, because if those two are being saccharine, then the world must be returning to normal, right? And Lydia is rolling her eyes at them. Yes sir. It's just a normal day in his normal high-school with his normal werecreature, fox-spirit, ominous-harbinger-of-doom classmates.

Malia's sharp little chin digs into his shoulder as she drapes herself over him and joins in watching their friends. 'They're cute,' she says bluntly. 'It's gross.'

'Malia Tate, you are a woman after my own heart,' Stiles informs her. He snuggles his head properly into the cradle of his folded arms, to see if he can catch a catnap, but it's no good, even with the warmth of Malia at his back. 

He smiles into his forearm when he feels her press a kiss to his cheek, before the teacher starts up his customary drone.

***

Stiles is pretty sure he'll sleep tonight. He's exhausted. And he settles into bed easy, no tossing and turning, and he gets that slow, drugged-honey feeling, heavy-eyelids and all, and thinks _fucking finally_ as he realises he's dropping off. _Take that, insomnia_. 

His next thought is _It's so cold._

'Hey, Stiles. Stiles? _Stiles.'_ Click, click, fingers snapping, waving in front of his face, bewildering -

Blink. Blink. 

Huh?

This isn't Stiles's room.

'Dude, did you sleepwalk the whole way here?'

'Shit.'

Scott's standing at the open front door of his house in only his boxers and Stiles is in his PJs and crap, it looks like he really might have actually sleepwalked the whole way over here. He should probably let his dad know where he is before he gets an APB put out on his ass. Also, how the fuck did he not get run over or, y'know, mauled by something, this is Beacon Hills we're talking about, and _whoa,_ okay - Stiles suddenly realises Scott's yanking him into the house by his wrist. 

'C'mon,' Scott says. 'Thank God my mom's on nightshift. It's three in the morning, man.' He rubs his eyes as he drags Stiles up the stairs.

'I should,' says Stiles, trying to get his brain fully back online. 'My dad -'

'I'll text him. You need to sleep.' Scott basically pushes Stiles into his bed and climbs in after him like it's normal. 'You can even be the big spoon if you want.'

'Damn straight I'm the big spoon,' says Stiles, muffled into Scott's pillow, which he's already stolen. Dimly he registers the click-clack of Scott's phone's artificial typing sound effects. He hopes his dad checks his phone before going Defcon One ...

When Stiles wakes up, it's with Scott McCall, secret were-octopus, all up in his business and snoring to boot, and despite talking a good game last night, Stiles is not, in fact, the big spoon. 

***

Math class. Lydia's texting under the desk, problems already solved and textbook open three chapters ahead of everyone else and the teacher, as usual, slightly too intimidated to do anything about the situation. Malia's poring over Lydia's notes, tongue kind of adorably poking out the corner of her mouth. Her pen is leaking where she's chewed it. Stiles should probably tell her, it'll ruin her work if it gets on the paper, but he's two rows back. He watches Scott, in the row in between them, touch her on the shoulder and pass her a pencil. 

Kira's next to Stiles, and she's staring into the distance out the window with her textbook on her desk, not even opened. There's a summer storm brewing, and the wind is battering at the glass, the first few spots of rain already landing. The sky's leaden grey. 

Lightning flashes. Kira jumps as it hits, or maybe just a bit before, and the roll of thunder matches the way she shivers under her jersey. It's like she's backed into a corner and poised to run. Her fingers clench around her pen too hard and in the wrong configuration for writing; maybe she wishes it was her katana.

Stiles realises he doesn't know if this is a kitsune reaction or a, y'know, human reaction. He wants to at least ask Kira if she's okay but he knows what she'll say - she'll say she's fine. 

Of course she is. So's Stiles. They're all totally fine. 

Scott leans back casually in his chair until his shoulder blades touch where Kira's fingers are clutching the edge of her desk. 

By the time the bell rings for the end of the period, the sky's clear. 

***

The rain gets in Stiles's eyes as he runs, blinding him, runnelling off all the product he uses to keep his hair off his face, and he swears to God he's gonna go back to the fucking buzz cut as soon as he wakes up, but for now he wastes a split second sweeping it back, slicking it out of his way. He keeps running. He can't see where he's going. He's asleep. He knows he's asleep. He keeps running, and the rain keeps pouring down.

'This is beautiful,' says Deucalion in a low voice, too smug and too close and not sounding out of breath even a little bit, even though he must be running if he's keeping up with Stiles. 'Round and round you go, like a goldfish in a bowl.'

All of Stiles's senses that aren't currently flooded with cold, metal-scented rainwater are telling him he's going in a straight line. 

'Do you even have any other settings?' Stiles pants, forcing himself to come to a halt. 'I mean, like, is it just Disney Grand Vizier levels of ick all the time, or do you sometimes switch it up?'

'Come on, little fishie,' wheedles Deucalion. 'Just keep swimming.'

'No, that's Pixar, you're not trying,' Stiles says, but it's not like he can really out-smartass this kind of Bond villain level creepazoid. And apparently he can't outrun him either, despite the whole, y'know, not being able to see where he's going thing. Stiles puffs and pants and strains to get ahead, wheezing like Scott used to pre-bite, and Deucalion's footsteps keep up with him the whole way. 

'Do you think this is working for you, Stiles?' Deucalion asks in a mildly interested voice. 'Fighting fate?

Stiles wakes with Scott catching him as he dry-heaves over the side of the bed, his lungs feeling red-raw like he's been running drills for hours. Scott's body is cold from the night air, he's still wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and as he sweeps Stiles's sweaty hair off his forehead he sighs and says, 'I gotta start coming round earlier.'

'I'm sorry,' Stiles gasps over the phantom taste of bile in his throat. He pulls himself out of Scott's hold and sits up on the bed instead, but he's shaking and Scott just sort of crowds in and grabs him, no questions, no hesitation. Like this is the most important thing he could be doing right now, looking after his useless lump of best friend who can't even take care of himself. 'Scott. I'm sorry. You don't have to -'

'It's not just you,' says Scott, lying down and pulling Stiles with him. Stiles mushes his face into Scott's chest and tries to get his breathing to stop rasping and burning, and wind his heartrate down from its frantic, painful drumming. 'Stiles. It's not just you.'

'You seem to be holding it together okay,' Stiles growls. Scott's skin and his own stupid tears muffle Stiles's words, but fuck it, Scott has super werewolf hearing. 'Which one of us is sobbing like a whiny little bitch?'

'Hey, shut up. Y'know if I'm not with you I don't sleep at all?' Scott says softly. 'Just lie awake, listening out. For you. For Kira. Lydia. Derek. Malia. And Isaac,' he adds, and Stiles winces, he knows how hard it hit Scott as an alpha to lose a beta like that, run off God knows where, but it gets worse, because Scott also says, '… and Allison,' in a very near-whisper and oh, God. 'I keep thinking maybe I hear her heartbeat,' he says brokenly. 'And then I remember.'

Stiles clutches Scott harder. 

'And it's not just … I mean, Lydia's barely holding it together. She watched her best friend die, she knew it was gonna happen and she couldn't do anything, and I can't even imagine what that must be like,' Scott goes on. Stiles doesn't want to hear this. 'Kira's terrified, all the time, and she still barely understands what she is and I can't help her go through that, no matter how hard I want to. Malia won't _let_ me help her even though I could. And I do, more than anything, I want to fix all this, and I can't, and that kills me. Stiles, none of us is okay, so will you quit thinking _you_ should be?'

'You should be the guidance counsellor,' Stiles jokes to break the moment, sniffles into Scott's shoulder. What he means is _how the fuck did I get lucky enough that you're my friend?_

'This isn't exactly how the pros do it,' Scott says. He kind of ruffles Stiles's hair. It feels nice. 

'Maybe they should,' Stiles says, nudging his head up into Scott's hand so he'll keep scritching. 'Feels pretty therapeutic to me.' He's still kind of crying, but it's just slow, wet, racking sobs now, that he can stifle against Scott.

'At least this I can help with,' Scott mutters. He pulls his hand off Stiles's head to yank at his own sweatshirt instead. Stiles manages to get the coordination together to get them both at least sort of under the quilt by the time Scott's kicked off shoes and jeans and shirt. 'Shit. I just wanna make things better -'

He sounds freaking tortured. Stiles butts their foreheads together gently. Scott takes forever to meet his eyes even so. 'Hey,' Stiles says, to make sure he's paying attention. 'You do, okay.'

Case in point, now that Scott's here Stiles sleeps the rest of the night through. But in the morning, he still doesn't know if Scott believes him.

***

The next night, Stiles falls asleep, kind of knowing he's drifting off, with his head on a copy of his history textbook and half-hoping he'll ruin it with drool, it's that boring. He does this in his own room. He distinctly remembers the fuzzy feeling of sleep creeping up on him. 

He wakes up with his dad's hands on his shoulders, shaking, yelling, looking panicked, and realises he's standing in the middle of the road outside his house. His feet and chest are bare, he realises. It's chilly. His dad is in uniform. Must have been coming home. 

'Good timing, Pops,' he says woozily, trying to give his dad the thumbs up and vaguely worried that he's made a really offensive gesture through lack of control of his own motor skills. 

His dad opens his mouth like he's gonna yell, and then frowns, and then his face crumples like Stiles just brutally murdered a puppy, and then Stiles gets hugged (all of this happens in crushingly slow motion) and pushed back inside. 

His dad then locks him in the linen closet, which is the only windowless room in the house, which Stiles distantly, fuzzily, approves of as being a logical plan.

There is the sound of a phone call outside. Stiles's brain has a lot of on-and-off flashing 'standby' lights at the moment, but he's pretty sure it's a phone call. His dad is calling someone. Either that or he's talking to himself 

By the time Scott turns up, Stiles has woken up properly, so they play X-box in the front room instead of sleeping, and Stiles's dad makes coffee and watches. 

Scott comes over for dinner the next night and doesn't leave after, and Stiles should probably be more disturbed by the fact that his dad doesn't even offer to make up the spare bed but on the other hand he should maybe just be more thankful for the fact that he has a dad he very rarely has to lie to any more. 

***

The nightmares won't go away. Stiles drowns, chokes, and freezes his way through a week, and every night he either wakes in Scott's arms, sobbing and, on one super fun occasion, throwing up, or he wakes cold and barefoot outside or somewhere on the way to Scott's house. His feet are cut to ribbons, and it's making lacrosse practice harder than it should be, flapping flat-footed like a duck, trying to not put pressure on any of the sore places but defeated by, y'know, being bipedal and the simple fact of gravity. Coach keeps telling him to pick up his feet. He just falls over more than usual. 

It's a toss-up as to whether Stiles would prefer the screaming night-terrors about all his friends dying, or the statistically-significant likelihood of supernatural disembowelment that comes with wandering comatose around this freaking town after dark, or being benched for the next game.

His bed smells of Scott and Scott's bed smells like home. It doesn't even register that this isn't necessarily normal until:

'So, are we celebrating you two taking your relationship to the next level or are you still in the painful denial stage?' Lydia asks drily in math class one morning. Scott nearly swallows the pen he was chewing and Stiles just sort of gapes at her. 'Only I notice that you're wearing each other's shirts, but that you carefully timed your arrivals at school to be a non-suspicious five minutes apart. Also you're both wearing ...' she sniffs delicately, head to one side like she's considering a fine wine, and then finishes, '… Stiles's deodorant.'

There is a too-long, awkward pause during which Stiles decides that he is an idiot and so is Scott and that Lydia is possibly the scariest person he knows, up to and including all the werewolves. Scott is now the one gaping. 

'Look, can we talk about this later?' Stiles finds his voice enough to ask. 'And can you possibly keep your voice down?' 

'Sure,' says Lydia with big, wide, innocent eyes and a smile full of high-school level evil. It's only because Stiles has spent kind of too much of his time in class over the years looking at her that he can see she's got deep shadows under her eyes, under the makeup. She startles when someone at the back of the class puts a textbook down too hard and it thuds, even if she catches herself before it becomes anything more than a flinch. 'I can't wait for the full, sordid story,' she says chirpily.

Stiles has to fight himself not to put his hand over hers, where it's trembling on the desk. It wouldn't help. She's trying to fake it til she makes it, and let's face it, if anyone can, Lydia can. She doesn't need him - not like this, anyway.

They explain during lunch. Lydia says it makes sense, in a pop-psychology sort of way. 'Scott's hard-wired to look after his pack,' she points out. 'He's supposed to know when you're not okay. And as for you,' she says to Stiles, 'comfort beats nightmares. Simple.' 

But since when was anything simple? Lydia's intuition is supernaturally good, but usually it leads her to trip over dead bodies. Stiles is not very reassured.

***

Y'know when you don't have nightmares? When you don't sleep. And Stiles needs to catch up on so much homework it's unreal, so this is a sensible solution. As sensible as anything. 

In his head he knows he's been down this road before and it didn't lead anywhere good then, but this is like, a binary system. Two options. He tried sleeping and that didn't work so now he's gonna try not sleeping, and then maybe he'll be so tired he _has_ to sleep? It's one night. Teenagers pull the occasional all-nighter all the time. It'll be fine.

Sleep, or do not sleep. Apparently there is no 'try'. 

He hauls himself through the night on the back of an essay on war poetry and some calculus problems he's not sure he got right, but whatever, it'll do and if it doesn't, he'll get Lydia's notes off her and it'll all be the same come exam time, right? Midnight comes and goes, and then the moon is low in the sky and eventually dawn arrives, and there's no Scott, presumably because his wolfy senses didn't tingle, because Stiles is fine, because this _worked_ \- 

Stiles chokes on a sudden cold worry that maybe _Scott_ wasn't fine, alone at night, but it's too late to do anything about that. He pulls on another shirt. He blinks at his breakfast. He blinks at his dad. He blinks at his car keys, until his dad yanks them out of his hand and drives him to school instead. Everything is … is like it's on a really slow strobe. Flash - scene - flash - scene - flash - 

'Hey, man, are you okay?' Stiles looks up from where he's been kind of staring at the lock on his locker for … some amount of time … and there's Danny leaning on the next metal door over, looking worried. 'You've been standing there like that for five solid minutes.'

'Oh. Uh. Yeah, I'm fine,' says Stiles, rubbing his hand over his eyes and letting go of the lock. 'Sorry. Just a bit tired, I guess.'

Danny bites his lip. 'You coming to class?'

'Hah. Class. Yeah. I should. I -' says Stiles vaguely, letting it trail off because words are really hard. He plucks at the dial on the lock again. Numbers, man. Danny very gently wraps his hand around Stiles's wrist and starts to pull. 'What's -?'

'Okay, space-case, I'm taking you to the nurse's office,' Danny says, and Stiles kind of tries to fight but he's distracted by the pattern on Danny's shirt, and before he really gets what's happening he's being tucked into an unfamiliar bed and the nurse is making him sip from a glass and swallow little round lumps that make him want to choke. And then he goes down into the dark again.

This time he's floating underwater and it's cold and he can't swim, can't drown, it's Limbo, it's endless, it's pointless, there's no-one here, there's no _lesson_ , there's just empty nameless unplumbable depths below him and above, not that he can tell up from down or sideways. All there is is the cold of the abyss. Forever.

He wakes up choking just as Scott bursts through the sickbay door. 

'I couldn't - they wouldn't let me out - I tried - ' Scott's gasping, like he ran a marathon, scooping Stiles up and clutching him tight. Long afternoon shadows slope through the open curtains. Stiles doesn't know which one of them is shaking more. 'God. Are you okay?'

'Fine,' Stiles coughs. ''M fine.'

'This is fucking stupid,' says Scott, and he sounds angry, at the end of his fuse. 'You're not fine. This isn't fine. There has to be something we can do.'

Stiles just rests his forehead against Scott's sweated-through shirt, and tries to breathe.

***

When they sleep together, they do sleep, but that's not a long-term solution, it's not a fix. It's not like they're gonna spend the rest of their lives having freaking sleepovers. So they shop around for something that will nip this in the bud. 

Like: 'Isn't this for dogs?' Stiles asks, staring suspiciously at the eyedropper full of fluid. 'Man, I tried drugs. Drugs do not work. Drugs are downright counterproductive in this situation.'

'Deacon says it might help,' Scott shrugs. They both take it. And okay, it's kind of funny watching what it does to Scott's sense of balance, but they don't sleep.

Like: 'Camping?' Scott asks, helping Stiles haul two little pup tents out of the back of the Jeep. 'Dude, it's nearly the full moon.'

'Derek said … well he said a lot of stuff, eventually, but mostly he said he thought maybe being out under the stars might, y'know, calm the wolf in you, and if one of us is sleeping better the other one ought to follow?' Stiles says, as they stagger through the spindly trees to their chosen tent-pitching spot.

Stiles nearly sleepwalks straight into a friggin' _bear trap_.

Like: 'Coach said try getting drunk, and gave me this.' Scott holds up a mostly-full bottle of Johnny Red.

Stiles stares. 'Okay, since when do we take advice from _Coach?_ I'm not even touching the fact that he gave his underage lacrosse captain a bottle of goddamn whiskey.'

'He said he'd rather have us hung-over than narcoleptic for practice.' Scott shrugs. He does that a lot these days, like he's given up trying to stay on top of things any more, like the world can just come at him however it wants and he'll deal with it as it happens. He doesn't try to explain why they're taking Coach's advice, but Stiles knows it's because they're kind of out of other options. So he grabs the bottle and takes the first swig. 

Stiles doesn't remember most of the rest of the night. So maybe it worked. He wakes up warm and calm, too dry-mouthed and mostly-naked, half on his side, face pressed into the pillow. There's a long brown arm curled around him, and something pressing firmly into his hip, pushing close and then dropping back, kinda slow, rhythmic, and Stiles finds himself going along with it. Feels nice. He's slow and sloppy and … yeah, kinda buzzed still, he thinks, and he lets his hips pulse into the sheets, same timing, a grind that's got his morning wood a little more purposeful than usual, until he hears a soft moan from - oh, sweet Jesus Christ on a popsicle stick, from _Scott_. 

It's Scott's arm around him. It's Scott making him this warm, this comfortable. It's Scott he got drunk with here, in _Scott's room_ , last night. So by very simple process of elimination that's Scott's dick poking into Stiles's hip. 

Shit.

Stiles slides out from between the sheets and under Scott's arm and leaves him in the bed. It's funny - he's aware that he's panicking but it's slow, fuzzy panic and he doesn't know if it's the alcohol or the boner or the fact that he slept through the night for once, but something is muting what should be a perfectly natural flailing freakout over this.

He's sticky and his mouth tastes like a horse died in it. He should shower. There's a damp patch in his boxers where Scott was all pushed up against him. It's probably just night-sweats, right?

Definitely time for a shower.

He tilts his head back and leans against the shower wall, hoping the water smashing in his face will wake him up, hoping more that it will make his confused body let go of the idea that it's gonna get some happy time out of this. Because that would be weird, right? Creepy-weird. Stiles turns the shower to cold and grits his teeth. 

By the time Scott gets up, Stiles is cooking bacon in the kitchen and neither of them says anything, because it is not something that happened. What _happened_ is they slept. Anything else, well … Stiles doesn't know if Scott was even awake. And it's not like anything, y'know. Happened. 

Unfortunately one thing that does happen is that Scott's mom finds the empty bottle. And let's face it, they really can't just get drunk every night. 

'Man,' says Scott, dragging his fingers through his hair. 'We just cannot catch a break.'

***

Stiles's dad starts adding Scott's accidentally-left-behind socks to the weekly laundry. Scott's mom starts buying Stiles's favourite breakfast cereal.

Neither of them ask any real questions. Stiles is glad they don't have to go through Awkward Parental Question Time, and he's glad they don't have to lie, but … he still wishes this new normal wasn't. They still at least try to go to bed in their own beds each night. Scott refuses to not take his mom her dinner when she's on night shift, and Stiles claims homework and books that he has at home and can't do without, and that he's not fucking going steady with Scott, let alone moving in with him. They still end up in each others' beds more often than not, but at least they're making a point.

Derek basically sneaks up on Stiles out of the shadow of his Jeep one night in a parking lot, when Stiles has his hands full with milk and toilet paper and other mid-week oh-shit-we-ran-out purchases, most of which Stiles freaking drops because Derek's sudden appearance scares the living shit out of him. 

'Jesus fuck, could you make some _noise_ when you move, please?' Stiles snarls, crouching down to pick up his groceries. Derek grabs him by the wrist. His fingers wrap completely around the bones of Stiles's forearm. 

'You need to take better care of Scott,' he says, glaring into Stiles's face with his big brown searchlight eyes. 'Somehow, you're part of this pack and he's your alpha, and even if he doesn't ask for help you ought to see it. All of you.' He stares for another moment like he's trying to burn this information into Stiles's brain, and then lets go and starts picking up Stiles's stuff. 

'In case it's escaped your notice, we're all kind of rocky right now,' Stiles snaps at him, grabbing the toilet paper. 'We're doing our best.'

He stands up and starts bundling stuff into the back of the Jeep, hyperaware of Derek behind him. The particular brand of hairs-on-the-back-of-the-neck-raising silence suggests Derek has his arms crossed across his chest.

'You're still not sleeping,' Derek says. It isn't a question. 'Malia's not in control of her changes. I don't even know what's up with Lydia or Kira. And Scott's grinding himself into hamburger meat trying to look after all of you.'

Stiles spins on his heel. 'How do you even know this shit?' he demands. 'Are you psychic? Is this a born-werewolf thing? Or are you just that big of a freaking stalker?'

Derek raises an eyebrow. If he were, y'know, capable of showing his emotions on his face, Stiles might think he was actually hurt. 'You're part of my pack,' he says. As if that's an explanation. 'Scott's my alpha, too.'

'I am too fucking tired for this,' Stiles growls, and climbs into the Jeep. He slams the door and sticks his head out the wound-down window as he twists the key viciously in the ignition. 'If your mystical werewolf powers have an actual, useful piece of information to impart, well, you apparently always know where to find me, so.'

Derek doesn't even flinch as the Jeep starts moving. 'There's a reason wolf-packs den together,' he says, shrugging. 'That's all I was gonna say.'

***

Erica is standing on the opposite bank of the river, arms crossed, smirking at Stiles. _I know something you don't know,_ says her expression.

'It doesn't always mean the same thing, Stiles,' she calls out to him over the rushing of the water. 'Drowning, I mean.'

'Are you gonna help me across?' Stiles calls back, ignoring the stupid riddle. He knows he has to get over the river the same way he knows his name, because dreams are like that. A toe dipped in tells him the water's cold and fast-flowing and that he's not gonna like it, so also kinda like his name.

Erica crouches down and cups a palmful of the water, lets it run through her fingers. 'It's not just a body of water. Rivers mean a lot of things to a lot of people, Stiles. Birth. Memory. Invincibility. Death. Travel. Power -'

'Hypothermia,' Stiles adds. He shrugs off his jacket. 'Guess I'm doing this on my own, huh?'

'You never have to be alone,' she says. Her eyes glint wolf-gold for a moment. 'What does the river mean for you, Stiles? What are you crossing here?'

'That's right, you just stay there and be dead and cryptic,' Stiles mutters, and starts wading.

It's like the heart of winter, but Stiles has faced cold water before. His body remembers, how to move and how to breathe. Erica watches from her bank, and Stiles fixes his eyes on hers and keeps moving even though his limbs are trying to lock up from the frigid temperature. But he looks away for a second, blinks and bites his lip, regretting his life choices, and by the time he reaches the spot where she was kneeling, she's gone - just a muddy footprint and a faint scent, the shampoo she used to use. Stiles wishes he could forget details like that.

He's wet and shivering. And he's alone. And now he's across the river, he can't remember why he had to be. Maybe he made it out of the water this time but it's still gonna kill him one way or another. His teeth are actually freaking chattering, loud and clockworky.

'H- help,' he forces out between lips that feel blue, hoping Erica's still out there, still close enough to hear. 'H- help me -'

A twig snaps. Stiles whirls around, kind of - mostly he flails 180 degrees and falls facing the other way. Before he can do anything to defend himself, he's blanketed in a hot weight, one that snuffles and shifts and holds him tight enough that he can't fight it. It yanks at his soaked clothes, dragging them off, tearing them, catching Stiles's skin with the blunt, frantic drag of its nails as it does so. It kinda hurts, but Stiles is too bone-frozen to do anything about it. If he's gonna die at least like this he'll die warm.

Warm feels _good._ Once Stiles is bare, once they both are, the warmth snuggles down, and there's a knee between Stiles's legs. Stiles lets it stay. Feels too nice to complain, even though something feels a little weird about it - the good feeling is stronger. Spreading his legs lets the warmth settle closer, hug tighter. It puts weight in sensitive places and there's a curl of interest low in Stiles's gut. He can't help it - he's getting hard. 

He tries to shift subtly, but that makes friction, good friction, and he makes a helpless noise, tries harder to get space because whatever, whoever it is that's trying to prevent Stiles getting hypothermia, they probably don't want him rubbing his inappropriate boner all over them. But a hot, wet mouth presses below his ear, and Stiles rocks his hips blindly up into the pressure that's now definitely rocking down against him. It's slow and gentle and his fingers and toes tingle with sensation, like something waking up. There are lips against his skin, curving a smile, hands around the jut of his hipbones holding firm. Stiles feels an utter certainty that he'll never be let go, that he's wanted, that this warmth is his to keep. They're aligned just right that their dicks slide together, wet with pre-come and the humidity of their bodies together, the inexorable slick of skin on skin. There's maybe the faintest hint of teeth scraping his earlobe and Stiles comes, gasping. And as he crests into orgasm Stiles realises three things: a) he's not dreaming anymore b) he's naked and c) that's Scott wrapped around him like a big warm equally-naked sex puppy.

If Stiles were still capable of overpowering Scott he'd be out of bed and hitting his bedroom wall fast enough to leave a dent. Then again, if Stiles were still capable of overpowering Scott that would mean Scott was still a skinny asthmatic, not an alpha werewolf lacrosse captain, and since Scott is the latter of those things, that explains why Stiles is still pinned under him.

'Hey,' says Scott sleepily.

This situation is so far beyond the casual 'hey' that Stiles is temporarily rendered speechless. Temporarily. 'Hey?' he demands. _'Hey?'_ and Scott's eyes suddenly snap wide open from their previous warm daze and he scrambles backwards off Stiles and off the bed and hits the wall still accelerating. 

'Oh, shit,' he says, wide-eyed. 'That wasn't a dream.'

'No shit, Sherlock,' says Stiles, yanking the bedclothes up to his chin. 'Dude, what the hell?'

'I don't know!'

'No, seriously, what the hell?'

'I said I don't know, Stiles, you're the one having the goddamn night terrors!' Scott crosses his arms in front of his bare chest like a startled romance novel heroine which a) is not covering the correct set of essentials and b) is a bit late. 'I just - I was just trying to help!'

Stiles is not doing much better on the romance novel heroine pose front, he realises, what with the whole sheet-clutching thing. 'Is this one of those 'I'm part of your pack' special werewolf things I'm not supposed to be part of except I somehow always seem to be?' he demands. 'Some kind of like, bonding thing? Because I don't think you and I necessarily need to bond like that.'

'No! I mean, I don't think so?' Scott doesn't sound very certain. 

'You don't think so. Well gee, thanks Scott, that's helpful.'

'Where have you been the last couple of years, man? I don't have a freaking werewolf manual! I. Don't. Know!'

'Boys?' Stiles's dad knocks at the door. 'You'll be late for school,' is all he says, but Stiles knows he must have heard at least some of the yelling. Fantastic.

'We know, we're nearly ready,' Stiles calls back. He hesitates for a second, then throws the bedclothes off defiantly. It's nothing he wouldn't be baring in the locker room post-game, so fuck it. He stalks across the room to grab a pair of pants, trying to maintain some dignity, while Scott whirls around and scrambles for his own pants. 'This doesn't leave the room,' he says to Scott. 'Right?'

'I'm not exactly going to go around shouting it to the rooftops,' Scott shoots back, not facing Stiles and already mostly dressed.

'Right. Good,' says Stiles. 'Good.'

There's a stinging, red-hot, extremely awkward pause, because what the fuck else do you say in this situation? Fortunately for them both, Scott breaks it.

'It's just one of those things, I guess,' he says after a moment, shrugging sheepishly. 'Right?'

'I guess the lycanthropy, the evil fox spirit, and the fact that Derek's homicidal uncle once returned from the dead are all probably weirder than a bit of innocent dude-on-dude action between friends,' Stiles allows weakly. 'We lived through all those things. This is totally small-time stuff.' It sounds thin even as he says it, but he has to say something.

'Right,' says Scott too eagerly. He bumps shoulders with Stiles and sort of bolts out of the room, thudding down the stairs. Blatantly running away.

Stiles pauses for a second before following, and turns back. 'I needed to wash these anyway,' he mutters, and drags the sheets off his bed to the laundry hamper.

***

They leave the house and Scott's bike isn't there, so Stiles guesses he must have freaking run over here last night or something. He's almost tempted to just let Scott walk home to get it like he's clearly thinking about. But fuck it.

'Get in,' he says, opening the Jeep up.

'Is that -'

'Just get in.' Because they've driven to school together a zillion times before and just because they, y'know, doesn't mean they can't do normal things anymore and ... and basically it just boils down to 'fuck it'. This is not a romance novel. What's a few extra bodily fluids between friends? They've already done blood, sweat and tears, so where exactly is the logic in balking at come? 

Lydia looks up when they walk into class together and her eyes narrow. Stiles holds her questioning gaze and gives her his best innocent look. Scott slips by to sit with Kira, hip-checking Stiles as he does it.

Stiles drops into the empty seat behind Lydia. 'What, no hello?' she says blandly. She's filing her nails, the perfect picture of a high school queen bee, except for the almost equally perfect ring of empty seats around her.

'Are you ok?' Stiles blurts out.

She gives him a lightning quick sketch of a smile that does crinkle the corners of her eyes but doesn't convince him, and says, 'of course.'

'Liar.'

'Well, are you?' she shoots back, putting the file down and flipping her book open as the teacher walks in. 'Are Scott and Kira?' She looks sidelong, and adds very quietly 'is Malia?'

'Point taken.' Stiles looks around but can't actually see Malia, which worries him.

'You're not the only one who can't be trusted alone at night,' murmurs Lydia, pulling her books out of her bag while chalk squeaks across the board. 'And you know what the solution is?'

'Tell me,' mutters Stiles, although he has a hunch. The teacher is already looking their way. Stiles bends his head to his (upside down) textbook. A few minutes later Lydia passes him a note. _don't be alone_

He tucks the scrap of paper into the book and thinks about math instead.

When Kira smiles at him in the corridor after and ducks off to the girls bathroom, he realises she's using the same shampoo as Lydia. Lydia shrugs at him when he raises an eyebrow at him, like _yes, and?_

Scott spends most of the day with Kira, sneaking kisses when they think no-one's looking. They can make even a jaded hag like Stiles smile sometimes, they're so impossibly sweet and earnest with each other, and Stiles just wants to hide them both away from the world, because at least _someone_ ought to get a chance to have a proper sweeping high school romance. Occasionally Scott looks over at Stiles with a question like 'are you doing ok over there?' in his eyes, and Stiles forces himself to nod and shrug and smile back and not think about how warm and good he felt, just for a moment, when Scott was looking at him like that in bed this morning.

But that's an inappropriate thought. Just like wondering if Lydia shares her bed with Kira as well as her shampoo. Well, does she? Girls have sleepovers all the time though, or so Stiles has always been led to believe, and not just the kind of sleepovers that have occasionally featured in his overheated imagination either, thank you very much. It probably wouldn't be that weird if they were staying over with each other a lot, or even if they were sharing a bed. Bed-sharing can be completely innocent. He ought to know, right? 

After this morning, that kind of begs a question, but there are some questions even Stiles won't ask.

'Where's Malia?' he asks Lydia instead. 

'At home,' she says blandly. 'It's her time of the month.'

Full moon tonight, Stiles remembers. More manacle bruises, and Scott will be antsy as fuck. But Scott's always at Stiles's these days because Stiles is a mess, even though there are other people who need his help. Stiles feels guilt like a bruise of his own, deep in his gut, and okay, maybe Derek had a point. Keeping Scott away from the others isn't fair to any of them, particularly Scott, and yet Stiles knows as long as he keeps being needy, Scott will keep being there for him, and the others are going to be fending for themselves.

'Do you guys -' Stiles starts, but Lydia cuts him off.

'We're doing fine,' she says. 'We're working it out. You,' she pokes him in the chest, 'need to worry about yourself. Get some _sleep,_ Stiles.'

He puts his head down on the desk and thinks about _pack_.

***

Scott goes back to his own house that night after lacrosse practice, not that they discuss reasons for that, but he does, and Stiles opens his closet and stares at a box of stuff he kept just in case he needed it, without ever once thinking it would be himself he needed it for. He pulls the box out and stashes it under his bed and then pulls out his books and mostly stashes them under his pillow, and then stares at the ceiling, thinking the logistics of this plan through.

Then he pulls out his phone.

 _I need a favor_ he texts Lydia.

_good for you. I need friends who don't text me at 11pm on a school night, on the full moon_

Stiles ignores that. _I'm gonna leave my bedroom window open. Can you come round tomorrow before school and untie me? In a nonjudgmental way?_

There's a long pause before she replies. _untie you_

_nonjudgmentally_

_you and scott need a safe word_

Stiles winces, bites the inside of his cheek. _can we leave scott out of this?_

_fine. You better be wearing clothes when I get there, stilinski_

_thank you_

_you owe me_

_I know_

Stiles puts down his phone and leans over his mattress to grab the box. 

The chains are cold when he clicks the manacles closed around his ankles. He ties a knotted, ripped-up old towel in his mouth cos if he starts screaming in his sleep it'll defeat the whole purpose. Finally he locks down his left wrist and, awkwardly and kind of painfully, with some squirming, manages to close the cuff around his right wrist too. 

Thank God it's a hot night. Stiles tosses and turns and the restraints bite at him a little but he's secure and at least he's not cold. He eventually sinks into something approaching sleep. 

He sweats. The twins are holding him down, both of them separate, not hulked out into their shared alpha form, and Stiles looks up just long enough to see a fucking bucket being held above him before the water comes down like a concrete block to his face. He gasps, but he can't breathe, he's choking on the weight and he can't move because of the fingers wrapped tight around his wrists, his ankles. 

When the deluge stops, one of the twins (Aidan, Ethan, who can tell? Who cares? Except Stiles is pretty sure it's Aidan, and if he'd bothered to care about stuff like that from the start then maybe a few things would have been different) says 'You have serious control issues, Stiles. Has anyone ever told you that?'

Stiles would answer, but he still can't talk. 

'It's not healthy,' Aidan says. 'I'm not saying you need to get all touchy-feeling, sharing and caring, but dude, unclench occasionally.'

All Stiles can do is make sarcastic _gee thanks_ noises like there's something stuffed in his mouth, wrenching at their hands that feel like steel. There's no way out, he can already tell that, but what else can he do but try? 

The sloshing sound of water above him makes him fucking frantic, twisting against his bonds, helpless and desperate and crying out abortedly against whatever it is that's stopping him from dragging air in and throwing words out - 

\- there's a stinging blow to his face and he opens his already-open eyes to find Scott leaning over him half-wolfed out, fangs and crazy sideburns and his nose and jaw part of the way to being a muzzle, glaring down at Stiles with his blood-red eyes. Stiles's cheek hurts. Scott must have slapped him, maybe more than once. Stiles tries to get up and suddenly remembers he kind of tied himself down when he jerks to a halt before he manages to get his elbows under to prop himself up.

'Stay still,' Scott growls. 'I'm getting you out.'

The ankles go first. Stiles draws his aching legs back together and tries rubbing them against each other to try and get some blood flow back to his toes. Scott gives him the worst 'you fucking dumbass' look Stiles has ever seen him give, and starts in on the makeshift gag. Before he pulls the knot free though, he holds up a finger (no claws, thankfully, and his face is starting to go back to normal) and says, 'If I take this out, you aren't gonna talk. Not til I tell you to, okay Stiles? I'm serious.' He looks pissed, and Stiles … isn't stupid enough to not understand why, but part of him is equally pissed, because Scott can't just swoop in here and _save_ him. Stiles is just as much of a grownup as Scott is and he's allowed to make slightly risky decisions for the sake of his friends just like Scott freaking is. 

The gag comes out. Stiles spits out towel lint and fluff and doesn't talk. His throat hurts, anyway. The cuffs come off Stiles's wrists, and Scott starts scrubbing at them where they're kind of red and bruised. He takes a deep breath and then says, tensely, 'You wanna tell me why you're …. doing whatever this is?'

Stiles shrugs sullenly, pulling his hands free of Scott and taking over rubbing his own circulation back to normal. Scott's not dumb. Stiles shouldn't have to spell this out for him.

'You realise you were about to freaking choke on this?' Scott demands, waving the knotted strip of towel. They're in each other's space and each other's shadows in the light of the full moon that's streaming through Stiles's open window. Scott's got himself pretty under control these days, but he's got that feral full-moon edge to him that Stiles is still a little wary of. Stiles shivers as Scott grabs at his sore, chafed ankle. 'This is dumb, Stiles,' Scott growls, stroking his thumb roughly up under the hem of Stiles's pyjamas, bringing the blood back to the abused skin. 'You can't do shit like this alone.'

'Fuck you, I had to do something,' Stiles growls. 'I need to find a solution, Scott. You can't keep babysitting me every night -'

'Is that what you think I've been doing?'

Stiles drags a harsh breath in through his nose, and ignores that. 'Look. I need - I need to be able to sort out my own messes, okay?'

'I'm not saying you can't! But I need to know you're okay, and this?' Scott holds up a manacle, the chain jingling, right into Stiles's face, 'is not safe. And you shouldn't do things that aren't safe. Not without me.'

He throws the manacle down onto the floor, he has one hand on Stiles's knee and the other he plants square into the pillow, forcing Stiles onto his back with Scott stretched over him. Scott's practically shaking, his eyes are glinting red. Stiles should be scared. 

'I can't lose you, man,' Scott breathes. 'Please. Whatever it is you need to do, you can do it, but you gotta let me help you.' And just like that, Stiles can't be scared. Not of Scott. Stiles is already stretching upwards for the kiss, already so ready to have Scott move those damn hands somewhere useful, when their phones simultaneously start to go off. They both nearly fall off the bed in shock, hurrying to grab the stupid noisy things (Stiles from his bedside table, Scott from his jacket on the floor) before Stiles's Dad wakes up, if he's home yet. 

'Hello?'

'Hello?'

'Stiles,' says Lydia tinnily, like she's somewhere that echoes. 'Malia got out.'

'What? How?' Stiles asks, and hears Scott asking the same thing, and then hears Kira in the background of _his_ call. 'Are you with Kira?' he asks.

'Are you with Scott?' Lydia shoots back, pissy because she's worried - Stiles knows that voice too well. 'I thought you were having some me-time tonight with your naughty toybox?'

'Oh my God, Lydia,' Stiles huffs down the phone. 'Yes, Scott's here and no, it's not what you're thinking and, really, I think we have bigger problems right now, so … one of you two hang up and we'll put the other one on speaker and let's actually pretend, for five minutes, that we have our shit together.'

'As if Scott McCall would ever have a competent pack,' Lydia says, but she does hang up. Stiles does the same and drops his phone on the bed.

'Put it on speaker,' he says, but Scott's already done it. 

'She got out of the restraints,' Kira says a little breathlessly. They're definitely somewhere indoors, because there's that echo again.

'Where were you keeping her?' Scott asks. Stiles knows they had to stop letting her weather the full moon at Lydia's house and at the lake house, because she ruined two basements and Lydia's mom isn't entirely pleased. And Kira's parents are great and all, but Kira's mom doesn't exactly want a ravening werecoyote in her beautiful house, which Stiles can kind of understand. 

'Uhh, the locker room at school?' Kira says. 

Scott and Stiles look at each other.

Lydia busts in. 'It has locks, it already stinks, and if it looks beaten up then Coach will just think the team trashed it,' she points out. 'That's beside the point. She broke a window and we think she's heading for the woods.'

'We're on our way,' says Scott, and hangs up. 'C'mon.'

Stiles isn't arguing. He's already hopping back into his jeans. 

***

Scott gets Malia's scent off her jacket, which Kira hung onto for exactly that reason. Stiles half-hysterically thinks they should put together some kind of like, portfolio of stuff they can use for this kind of shit, because they can't always rely on friends carrying each others' clothing around. This is why the supernatural hasn't taken over the damn world, it can't fucking organise itself for shit. Werewolves could be _running the country_ but they're too busy not being logical -

Lydia snaps her fingers in front of Stiles's face. 'Wake up,' she says sharply. 'We have work to do, remember?'

‘Right, right,’ Stiles says, but he’s already gone again in his mind, systematically categorising every single possible hiding spot that Malia would know about and discarding the ones that aren’t within a six-mile radius of the school. He comes up with a list of seventeen possible areas, then expands the parameters to include new hiding spots that Malia might find, and his list suddenly quadruples in length. Theoretically he could rule out the ones she wouldn't know about, but then again what if she's not alone or if someone's found her, someone like Peter, or -

Stiles feels a little lightheaded, wobbles on his legs, and this time Scott’s the one that shakes him back to reality.

'We'll find her, Stiles,' he says sharply. 'C'mon. Where are we looking? Stiles. _Stiles?_ '

'Woods,' Stiles says, snapping out of his mental cartography of Malia-sized places to hide. 'She'll be looking for somewhere safe, her own territory, that kinda thing - so, woods.'

'Makes sense,' offers Kira. 'But we shouldn't split up. Stay within each other's sightlines, right?'

'Right,' says Scott. He looks off to one side, eyes going vacant. 'Derek's coming,' he says. Stiles doesn't ask how he knows. 

'Good. We could use all the help we can get,' says Lydia.

Stiles finds himself rolling his eyes up to Heaven and thinking _amen_.

***

It's nearly three in the morning when Stiles hears a twig snap wrong, in the woods, near enough to the Nemeton that his metaphorical hackles are up. He listens harder, starts heading towards the source of the sound, not caring that he's out of sight of Derek, somewhere off to his right. Stiles is, for what it's worth and without any deliberate metaphorical significance, the end of the line. 

He veers towards the tiny sounds of movement, heading downhill now, very slightly, into a dip and a gully where a tiny trickling bit of water is running, too small to call a stream really, but more than a puddle. 

There's a pale, hunched over shape in the water. Fortunately Stiles long ago perfected the art of freaking out while running. 'Malia?' he calls, although he knows already. 'Malia! Malia - c'mon, c'mon, c'mon-c'mon-c'mon -'

He collapses to his knees at Malia's side and pulls her until she's at least out of the frigid trickle. It's harder than it looks in the movies - comatose people are heavy. 'C'mon Malia,' he mutters, yanking and pulling and hideously conscious of how little she's wearing and how cold it is. Every time the water touches him he shudders, disgusted on some gut level by it for absolutely no sensible reason. Malia's stirring, though, which has gotta be good even though she's freezing cold and soaking wet, dripping, cold water wicking its way through Stiles's hoodie, making him shiver. 

He pulls the hoodie off and pulls Malia's slowly wriggling, fighting body into his lap. He octopuses his arms around her and tries to wrap the hoodie on top. 'It's okay, I gotcha, I gotcha,' he murmurs, and shit, her skin is like ice against him where he's so warm from traipsing all over hill and dale wrapped up in, y'know, actual clothes.

He rocks back and forth and tries to remember if there's anything else he should be doing for hypothermia. He cuddles her as tight as he can. 'C'mon, Malia,' he keeps saying, over and over, as if it helps. She's not unconscious, but she's out of it, naked as a jaybird and god, god, he just can't seem to get warm, to get _her_ warm. 

Drip, drip, drip, goes the water from Malia's hair onto the dirt and stones underfoot. Stiles can't help twitching every time, like clockwork. Malia shivers. She used to complain, Stiles remembers, in Eichen House; complain that she didn't have a fur coat any more and she was cold - 

'It's gonna be okay,' Stiles tells Malia in a shaking voice, rocking her. 'We'll - we'll get you warmed up again and everything is gonna be just fine, yeah? It's going to be fine.'

Except they're alone in the cold woods and it's quiet and none of the others was conveniently carrying any of Stiles's stinky clothing so, y'know, logic suggests maybe they're not gonna be alright ... Malia makes a little _mrrrrm_ noise and curls towards him. Stiles is starting to get cold now, too, the damp seeping into his bones.

The water keeps dripping, keeps trickling, and it's so loud it echoes deep in Stiles's skull. His eyelids start to droop.

'It's gonna be okay,' he whispers, kissing the top of her head woozily. 'It's gonna be okay ...'

***

This nightmare is black and white, clean and simple and surrealist. It's like looking in a mirror except that Stiles isn't smiling, and the Stiles staring at him is. 

'You learnt nothing, did you,' says Void, through Stiles's smiling mouth. 'This division of the world into absolutes is what weakens you. There is no Stiles/not-Stiles divide. It's a false dichotomy.'

'Like fox and wolf?' Stiles asks. The puddle he's standing in is dark and inky and still. It crawls at the hems of his jeans. 

'Fox and Wolf were brothers,' Void points out, crossing his arms. 'Day and night, life and death, light and dark - you give them two different names as if they weren’t by their very nature connected, the same thing from different vantage points. Shades of grey, Stiles. You can draw all the lines you like, but really, it's all just shades of grey.' The pool around Stiles's ankles is rising fast. It looks pretty black to him.

'Yeah, well, I heard that was a shitty book,' Stiles shoots back, on autopilot. He's wet to his knees now. He has to brace himself against the crushing pressure. He's not going to panic, or fall. He's not going to give the Nogitsune the satisfaction. 'And anyway, it sounds like you missed the point.'

Void ignores his little literary review. 'How about we talk about something else,' he suggests, as the liquid crawls around Stiles's elbows. 'How about we talk about miracles? Can you walk on water, Stiles?'

Void floats. Stiles doesn't, just watches him rise and rise. The black tide is lapping at Stiles's mouth. He shuts it tight, and glares. He's sick of dying in his dreams. Suiciding to wake up is so very fucking _Inception_ , and that movie wasn't nearly as deep as it thought it was. He's gonna live through this one, he decides. Fuck all this. He's gonna live.

So no, he can't walk on water. But he can swim. He starts to try and paddle, trying to keep his head above water. It works, up to a point. 'Who needs miracles?' he asks Void, in between lapping black waves. 'Maybe just you.'

Void smiles at him, all teeth, not reaching his eyes, and looks up at the sky. It's flat white, bright. 'So, living means coming with me again?'

Stiles's feet stop treading momentarily. 'What?'

'Drawing lines means making choices. Is this what you choose?'

'I never chose you. I _will_ never choose you.' Stiles's mouth is starting to fill up, no matter how hard he spits and flounders. 

Void gestures up, gestures down. 'The horizon is just another line. Have you ever heard the phrase, 'go towards the light,' Stiles?' He reaches out a hand, still grinning, and Stiles stops paddling. 

No. No, no, no. Never again.

Stiles takes a deep breath, and dives. The pressure is crushing almost immediately, the blackness is absolute, but at least the blackness is not Void. He swims, kicking down, pulling himself as far as he can with his arms, no recognisable swimming style other than sheer blind panic crossed with doggy paddle. 

His arms tire early, like elastic bands stretched too tight, and he's too buoyant to get far, seems like. Guess that's why divers wear lead weights, right? But he keeps pulling at the water like he can dig his way in, down, away. 

Jesus, it's like he's got an elephant sitting on his chest. He struggles to breathe, forgetting the water, the cold, except he's not cold, actually, he's really goddamn warm -

'Oh thank God,' says Malia breathlessly, her arms like a band around Stiles's chest. 'Thank God. You woke up. Guys!' she bellows, lifting up, but not letting him go. 'Guys, he's awake!'

'Can't. Breathe,' Stiles wheezes. 

'Shut up,' she orders him, and then she kisses him. Her hands slip up from around his ribs to his face, and that makes it easier to breathe, which makes it easier to kiss her, which he's pretty on board with. She's got clothes on now, he notices distantly. Also they're horizontal. Bed? Feels like a bed.

Malia's a bossy kisser, which Stiles already knew because they have done this occasionally, or they used to, before he started not being good study buddy material because of the screaming night terrors and all. He's kinda missed it, being put in his place by her. And he's getting into it, reaching for her, when - 

\- there's an almighty thudding on the landing floor - ah, so, they're at Stiles's house, right? - and Scott bursts in, with Kira and Lydia behind him. 

Malia pulls away from Stiles and half gets off him. 'He's okay,' she says, sitting up but not moving away. There's something very momma-bear about her right now. Stiles wants to roll over and snuggle his face up against her hip. She's warm and smells good.

'Checked, did you?' says Lydia, raising an eyebrow. She leans against the doorframe and gives Malia a Look that Stiles can't, at this precise moment, categorise, but Kira's kinda blushing so it's … probably none of his business, actually. 

'Dude, we thought you were a goner,' Scott says, plopping himself down on the mattress. Stiles levers himself up into a sitting position, feeling fragile. 'You've been out for like, three days.'

'What happened?' Stiles asks fuzzily. 'Is Malia gonna be okay?' It feels important to ask Scott that. Because Scott's supposed to know. 

It's confusing, having Scott here and not in the bed, but Malia's in the bed, and there was making out. But not with Scott. With Malia, like Stiles used to. And Scott makes out with Kira all the time but apparently he's into making out with Stiles too so …

… except they don't talk about that, right? ...

'I'm right here, remember?' says Malia, breaking into the spiralling thought-cycle and pushing at Stiles's shoulder, as if she'd rather be punching it but is holding off out of respect for his frailty. 'And yes, I'm fine. I was just cold. I'm a were-coyote, dumbass. But _you_ are a squishy human. And you got hypothermia.'

'But … in a really brave way?' Kira adds from the doorway. 'I mean, he did actually find you, c'mon, cut him a bit of slack.'

'Seconded,' says Stiles, raising a hand classroom-vote style. 'By my heroic actions in getting hypothermia were the townsfolk saved from the ravening were-coyote -'

Scott yanks him into a hair-scruffing headlock, then lands a kiss at the corner of Stiles's mouth. Right in the middle of Stiles's crowded bedroom. Then he pushes closer and kisses Stiles properly, with Malia still propped up against him and everyone else _still there_ and it's possible Stiles is having a little tiny freakout right now. 

A tiny freakout but god, Scott tastes good, and Stiles isn't man enough to let that go, not when they didn't get this earlier and it feels so good. He lets Scott nip at his lower lip and opens up for him, just a little bit. 

When Scott finally lets him go, which parts of Stiles is upset about, it's Lydia Stiles looks to. Lydia Martin, rock of sanity and source of all sardonic advice that doesn't come from Stiles himself. Lydia _will_ have a comment about this. She just will. 

He's aware that his expression basically says _help_ with about three exclamation points after it but he will deal with the mocking later.

Lydia just shrugs at him. 'Apparently it's a pack thing.'

In the doorway still, Kira tangles her fingers with Lydia's. Malia's a hot presence at Stiles's shoulder and Scott is still up in his space, smiling, and everything that should be weird just isn't. Isn't at all. Just like the left-behind socks and the cereal purchases and the late-night X-box weren't weird, and like how their parents don't ask questions. Stiles thinks about lines, and choices, and control, and prices he's paid, and about the emptiness of Void. 

It's too big, and he's too woozy, to work all the details out properly, but he does have one question. 

'Does this mean I get to mack on Derek now?' he asks. 

Scott's eyes crinkle up. 'If you want.'


End file.
